Quotes About Community

And it's not even strange that it feels the way it's always felt like the place we belong to. Like home.

Imagine, my brother signed. Imagine if somebody built a bridge right outside our window and we could just walk across the highway and be on the other side.

We knew Down South. Everyone had one. Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico.

You know how many more rich Negroes there'd be if we wasn't all the time trying to pay off some lawyer or bailing a brother out. That's one thing I'm truly guilty of--giving hard-earned money to the man.

Even when my girls were little, we'd go down there, my grandmother tells us. And people'd be marching. The marching didn't just start yesterday. Police with those dogs, scared everybody near to death. Just once I let my girls march.

She said she'd chosen Santa Cruz because when se walked around the campus, she blended somehow, no one asking if she was part Negro, no one accusing her of passing for white.

What's the thing, I ask her, that would make people want to live together? People have to want it, that's all.

Jacqueline Woodson

we looked, we saw the people trying to dream themselves out. As though there was someplace other than this place. As though there was another Brooklyn. August

Aunt Lucinda, Miss Bell and whatever neighbor has a breath or two left at the end of the day for sitting and running our mouths.

Now out on the floor, Melody and Malcolm were being joined by their friends, other babies turned into teenagers becoming a crush of butt-length braids and perfectly shaped fades, long painted nails lacing into lotioned teen-boy hands. He shook out his shoulders, realized his own hands were sweating. Most of the grown-ups were tapping their feet, some even moving in to dance beside the young people.

But that afternoon there was an orchestra playing. Music filling the brownstone. Black fingers pulling violin bows and strumming cellos, dark lips around horns, a small brown girl with pale pink nails on flute. Malcolm's younger brother, his dark skin glistening, blowing somberly into a harmonica. A broad?shouldered woman on harp. From my place on the stairs, I could see through the windows curious white people stopping in front of the building to listen.

Don't even know they're in the presence of royalty when they ask, How come you all sit together? without checking their own all-white tables.

Somehow, my brother and I grew up motherless yet halfway whole. My brother had the faith my father brought him to, and for a long time, I had Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi, the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn, as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying, Here. Help me carry this.

Let's say it's rain--the people who got problems with us being together--let's call them and their problems rain." Ellie nodded. "Okay, they're rain." She smiled. "So now what?" "So it's not always raining, is it? But when it's not raining, we know the rain isn't gone forever.

Friendship for me is made from a tapestry of personalities, each of whom shares a part of all I care about.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this link with one's neighbor.

A major fact of our present civilization is that more and more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin.

The man of today is no longer able to understand his neighbor because his profession is his whole life, and the technical specialization of this life has forced him to live in a closed universe.

The great and admirable strength of America consists in this, that America is truly the American people.

I do not know if Saul Alinsky knows God. But I assure you that God knows Saul Alinsky.

I say: If you don't know how to cook, I'm sure you have at least one friend who knows how to cook. Well, call that friend and say, 'Can I come next time and can I bring some food and can I come an hour or two hours ahead and watch you and help you?'

J'aimais que les gens écrivent sur les murs, sur les maisons, sur les trottoirs, dans la rue, partout. De toute façon, j'aimais les mots.